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From the synagogue alleyways of Bukhara, the Dagestani mountain villages, and the Tbilisi old quarter, three ancient Jewish communities have rebuilt themselves across two continents. Today roughly 150,000 Bukharan Israelis, 75,000 Mountain Jewish Israelis, and 75,000 Georgian Israelis live alongside major diaspora hubs in Forest Hills, Brooklyn, and Sunny Isles. This lesson maps where they are, what they preserve, and how the Abraham Accords reshaped relations with Azerbaijan, the Mountain Jewish ancestral home.
Cultural note, Or Yehuda is the unofficial Bukharan capital of Israel: about 30 percent Bukharan, with the Bukharan Jewish Heritage Museum, kosher Central Asian restaurants, and signage in Bukhori-Hebrew. Forest Hills, Queens has been called "Buchara on Queens Boulevard", over 50,000 Bukharan Jews, more than 40 synagogues, and a stretch of 108th Street where you hear Bukhori, Russian, and Hebrew in the same conversation. The Mountain Jews of Holon and Hadera maintain a distinct identity through STMEGI, the international Mountain Jewish foundation funded by Azerbaijani-Israeli oligarch German Zakharyaev.
Israeli Cities and Neighborhoods
Forest Hills and US Diaspora
STMEGI and Heritage Foundations
Endangered Language Preservation
Israel-Azerbaijan Modern Relations
Three Communities, One Map
A community organizer in Or Yehuda explains the modern geography of the three Mizrahi-Caucasian communities to a new oleh, where they settled, what they kept, and what is at risk.